Vehicle tracking and trailer tracking are an important part of fleet management. The complex and large-scale operations of fleet management systems dictate that the owners/administrators keep track of the status and location of the vehicles and the trailers. Trailers of a fleet can be parked in trailer yards or distribution centers prior to being picked up and used for goods delivery. A “hook” event occurs, when a driver physically couples a vehicle to a trailer for transporting goods or material from a location to another location.
Typically a driver of a vehicle (e.g., of a tractor) will physically couple its vehicle with the trailer that he is to transport. An administrator/owner of the trailer or the vehicle may want to learn at the moment that the “hook” event occurs an identification of the trailer that is to be picked up by a given vehicle. This information can be used by the owner/administrator to determine whether the right trailer has been coupled to the proper vehicle, that a delivery event is initiated, etc.
Several techniques exist for virtually associating a trailer with a respective vehicle to indicate that the vehicle and the trailer are physically coupled. Some solutions use separate proprietary systems for tracking trailers and vehicles. The use of the separate proprietary systems renders the task of associating a trailer with a corresponding vehicle very complex for an administrator of the fleet. Other solutions rely on static association between trailer and vehicle made by an operator or the driver of the vehicle, requiring that the person be present at the site where the hook event occurs.
Some existing solutions may rely only on localized information exchanged between a vehicle and a trailer via short range network communication protocols. However, typically the hook event occurs in locations where hundreds or thousands of trailers and vehicles can be parked, which makes this solution prone to errors and inaccuracies due to the multiple trailers or vehicles that can be detected by a vehicle or trailer via a short range network communication protocol.